"What a sad philosophy, but what a proud one!"
"It contains less pride than sadness, and I would give much of its arrogance so as never to feel its bitterness."
"Who led you to it?" she queried, interested in these matters which seemed sufficiently new to her mind.
"But it is natural. How conceive a life different from what it clearly appears to eyes that can see? Yes! perhaps a certain illusion is possible.... What a pity, doubtless, what a pity for me that I did not meet you earlier—years ago. I would have loved you, and then...."
"What would have befallen your destiny, as a result?"
"You would have deluded me about life's value, Madame," Hubert continued, with a poetic enthusiasm that bordered on persiflage. "I would have drunk, like an external absinthe, the fluid illusion of your sea-green eyes and would have chained myself to life by the golden chain of your blond hair."
She veiled herself with indifference lightly embroidered with irony and, believing herself sheltered from a too inquisitive glance, ingenuously replied:
"It is really but three years since I was twenty-seven. It is now the thirtieth year, or almost."
He looked at her from head to foot, but without insolence.
"What frankness! But you have no need to lie." His eyes returned to her figure, which was a little full, he thought.